Counselling and Class : Power, privilege and professionalisation

This powerful collection of essays and interviews argues that class, erased from counselling discourse, deeply shapes clients and therapists. It critiques a profession dominated by white, middle-class norms and costly training, calling for inclusivity and awareness of social forces to make counselling truly accessible.

Class hasmore or less vanished from the counselling lexicon, argues Clare Slaney in thispowerful collection of essays and interviews with experienced practitionersfrom myriad counselling and psychotherapy schools, educations and trainings. But you cannot take politics out of counselling. To be truly therapeutic,counselling relies on depth of relationship, non-judgemental attitude and anacute awareness that we are all fundamentally shaped and changed by ourenvironments, past and present. The class we are born into powerfully influenceswho we are, our expectations and opportunities and our ability to (in Rogerianterms) self-actualise. If counselling is to be truly in service to its clients,the profession has to welcome practitioners who do not conform to thestereotype - White, middle-class, degree-educated, comfortably affluent andfemale. But the drive towards professionalisation, led by market forces andoperationalised in the form of increasingly rigid hierarchical standards andmanualised practices, has made counselling all-but out of reach to workingclass folk and those without a reliable income, both as a profession and atherapy. Its training has become unaffordable and its culture increasinglyhostile to anyone other than those who conform to the stereotype. Thought-provoking, challenging, confrontational and angry, this collectionfills a gaping void in the professional literature and makes essential readingfor every counsellor and psychotherapist, supervisor, tutor and academicresearcher.